Some do, some don't. Stock edits certainly do. Moo2 does. Pirates does.
All of which are perfectly affordable as a blue, and fairly popular as edits.

All of which also goes to prove my point: We're discussing edits now, not
settings.

Fedsafety is a benefit for blues, it's not a bug, it's an intended feature.
Mixed corps are part of the game.

Just like Commissioned ships there should be Red Ships that only the red players can use. The Feds don't always have the best stuff
On that note:
There should be a second Stardock where Reds are safe and any Commissioned Player can be shot at.... I mean fair is fair.

I'm not talking game edits, stock ships.

When using a bug "mega rob" and another bug to drop experience in a mixed corp "your" game is much too easy to play. We're talking about how to make an old school edit here.

Old School or Classic TW play was much more strategically challenging IMHO. Today's modern game is simply played with brute force "scripts". While the authors of these scripts are extremely knowlegeable of the game, they are at the end of the day just a string of macros. Today's games are simply who's written the better script and knows how to use it to their advantage. You may enjoy this type of game, but not everyone does.

I'm proposing a change to the mixed corp penalty for the "Old School" mode. As always, you play the game settings you enjoy, and I'll play the ones I enjoy.

Part of what I see comes as a solo against a corp of 2 or 3. The mixed corp usually keeps a fedsafe blue to colonize, go to dock, and bring a ships to terra. Having a player that you can never attack because all they do is turtle or fed sit is lame. I would at least like to see the fedsafe blue have to work a little to maintain it.

Yeah, "get a corpie" - no thanks - no time to do that and do it right.

               / Promethius / Enigma / Wolfen /

"A man who has no skills can be taught, a man who has no honor has nothing."

Singularity keeps talking about how edits can be used to bring more balance and achieve some of the goals I want for a more traditional game. That's basically what I mean by a "game mode". I need to add some new settings to allow some things to be better controlled, but then this game mode will basically just be an edit that's integrated with the game, where several settings are locked in. There could probably be a set of special game modes like this. Think of it like I'm including a set of popular edits as part of the game, to simplify a gameop using those modes. In fact, I'd be in favor of integrating a few of the most popular edits at this point. Once they're updated to work with any changes I've made for this release.

With the new edits system, when you install an edit, the game will be identified as that edit unless you change any setting that is relevant to gameplay. That's all the "old school" game mode will be. A bunch of locked settings, and if you change any of them, the game no longer reports as "old school". EDIT: Actually, I want it to be more rigid than that. You won't be able to change those settings without a rebang, so choosing this "mode" will be a Bang option.

What those settings end up being is an open question at this point. It's going to take some time, testing, and debate. But I think it's worth making that effort.

ROTFLOL. Easy to play? You didn't last long the last one you played. Old school
is easy, real play is not. You just want settings that fix your own personal
bad habits.



Old school play wasn't strategic at all. It was just slow and boring. The
game is a lot more strategic now. A bad startup plan can spell a loss,
the game is a lot less forgiving, that's all. To write good scripts you
have to have a really solid knowledge of the game. I'll bet $10 I know
more about game mechanics than you do. It takes skill to do what we do,
there's no "brute force" involved.



So what then, you're going to craft a mode to bypass every weakness of
play you have? Instead of actually just learning to play?

Not everything needs a setting. Stock settings are reasonably well balanced
as they stand, and mixed corps are the way to get the best of both worlds.
Only change I'd make is to cut the planet times in half by default, increase
eprobe cost, and max the sector count as high as possible. That way blues
can overcome reds later in the game, the way it's meant to be.

Instead of finding excuses, find a corpie.



You don't actually think a solo can compete against a corp of 2 or 3, right?
And why should they be able to? The other team has more people. They put in
more effort to the game, they should get something out of it.

A mixed corp is one way to get fedsafe, there are a dozen others. If you take
one away people will just use another. In the process, you make the game more
difficult to learn.

Right, but if you're not careful you make changes that make the game less balanced
instead. It's easy to say "I want more balance" but it's a lot harder to actually do it.



Yeh, but then you're going to end up with tons of games and nothing labled "old
school." I guarantee the mode you put out will be bent up, and sysops will have
to adjust their settings to fix the problem. At that point, who's going to use a
broken option? It's like ship delay now, it sounded good in theory but got shot to
heck in practice.

I encourage people to think deeper on this stuff. I know it's tricky, but it helps.

Ship delay is useless unless you create planet delay as well.

You'll only be happy it seems if everyone subscribes to playing with TWX and Mombot. You have absolutely no idea exatly what may or may not happen with the mode edit. We're here to propose edits for the new mode.

I'm here to give my opinions and unique perspective having been away from the game for 8 years. And mixed corp penalties was one of the things that caught my eye early on. I'm not saying it's changed, but the way players use it has changed from when I played the game.

I'd love to interview JP and Gary Martin to get their persectives on how the game was "intended" to play.

Yeh, but the ship delay exists, doesn't it? Proving my point that it's very
easy to overlook details until they're staring you in the face. It'll be that
way here, too. Waaaay back in the beginning of this thing I pointed out
how getting stuck into the tactics mire was a mistake because of the
amount of dev time it would take. I just want to point that out again. I
figure, at the rate its going, I'll need to point that out 2 or 3 more times.



You can play how you want, just expect to get blasted if you don't play
competitively. And you know what? I bet I do have a really good idea of
what will happen in the mode. This isn't exactly my first software dev
experience, dearie.



It caught your eye because you couldn't figure out how it worked, even
tho it fits a very insanely easy formula. If you can divide by 4, you can
figure it out. Players had mixed corps 10 years ago, maybe you didn't,
but many corps were mixed. The difference is, back then, people would
rather have a mega-corp than a mixed corp if possible. Today, mega-corping
is seen as cheating. Higher standard, yo.



And the game is alive today because it's not played that way. Just goes
to show, the road to hell is paved in good intentions. The world doesn't
need another game-in-a-box.

But sweet’ems, I only want to play TW competitively, I don’t want to play “Bot Wars!”



Phfffftttt... mega corping is more challenging and therefore not your cup ‘o tea. Everything about today’s game settings and edits make the “Game” easier to play, not more difficult. The only challenge today is not learning the game but learning your scripts and bots to compete against other scripts and bots.





Exactly! Playing against software or scripts IMHO IS playing another game-in-a-box. Whether you use this edit/mode or not on your server is entirely up to you. I’m not forcing anything on anyone even though I still feel as if your style of play is being forced on me.

Sorry folks, this is starting to look like smack when all I really want are ideas or suggestions from those of you who might be in favor of an Old School mode, or Classic TW mode.

Guess I missed that poll.... Did you vote for all of us already?

Derp?

I guess I just don't understand what you mean by:



What exactly are we shooting for here? No pdropping no antici-photon scripts? You seem ok with scripts for trading or moving product...
If you want a 'skip back down memory lane' to the time before multiplayer...just fire up a server with one node?




You should really be open to discussion from those not in favor as well...

ok, so lets touch on a few things here. jp wants a mode that mimics the mid/late 90s play, as a bang setting with locked options(a good idea). cruncher wants random changes that dont make the game like the mid/late 90s model, and if you point it out to her she thinks its smack or says 'you dont have to play it'. sing for some reason is still trying to talk sensibly to cruncher, whos idea of debate is "your wrong im right i played 10 years ago" ignoring that almost everyone who posts here (including me) played in the mid 90s. and the good ideas expressed in the thread are buried under a bunch of silliness and mumbojumbo.

derp derp indeed.

Planet delay would be very nice. I want to give the casual mostly manual type player a fighting chance to avoid pdrops.

You already have the one node option now, nothing to change here.



If you don’t want it, don’t play it. Just as today if you don’t want to play a particular edit, then don’t.

So far the only changes I’ve proposed are planet delay and mixed corp penalty.

Changes I’ve NOT suggested:
These should always be stock games only... NOT
These games don’t allow scripts of any kind.. NOT.

These games will however most likely tend to be low turn time limit games. Not for everyone, I understand that. I’m not here to please everyone obviously.

Begs the question... Who are you here to please? My eye sights going and I can't see them.